It's amazing to think that some people thought the Tories would be any different to Labour, although bansturbatory policies probably go down very well with a small majority of voters or whatever political persuasion. From the BBC:
Councils are to be put in charge of encouraging healthier lifestyles under plans to be unveiled by ministers.
Local public health directors will be moved out of the NHS and into local government as part of the shake-up. The government believes the wider remit of councils in areas such as housing, transport and leisure puts them in a stronger position to tackle smoking, drinking and obesity in England.
And so on an so forth ad infinitum.
Claptrap
13 hours ago
13 comments:
Die nationalsozialistische Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude (KdF) war eine politische Organisation mit der Aufgabe, die Freizeit der deutschen Bevölkerung zu gestalten, zu überwachen und gleichzuschalten.
"The National Socialist (Nazi) association "Strength through joy" was a political organisation with the aim, to arrange, and shape the freetime of the German public, to oversee it, and that it conformed (With Nazi ideals).
Now, don't let me EVER hear one of you whiniging Poms boast EVER again that "We won the war!"
WIR haben gewonnen. So viel ist GANZ offensichtlich!
(WE won. That much is TOTALY obvious!)
And YOU are laughable.
Falls Ihr dafür einen Link braucht, er ist hier.
Hmm. Sorry. Forgot. :-))
Memo to self.
1. Get drunk more often
2. Eat more chips
3. Slob out in front of telly
L, I can see problems with that:
1. if you're boozing at home in front of the TV you're not out fighting people and smashing things up.
2. Chips are perfectly healthy (veg, roughage, a bit of veg oil/fat, Vitamin C and a sprinkle of salt).
3. Watching TV is very low energy consuming (compared to your other hobbies) and thus is 'good for the planet'.
MW - Bugger. Thwarted again.
This goes along with the unconfined joy that 120,000 public sector jobs have been "saved".
One important reason to have "cuts" was that instead of having 120,000 diversity outreach workers slaving away in council offices and NHS trusts up and down the country (ie a cost not a benefit to the economy) we would have 120,000 potential workers in the, presumably, wealth-creating private sector.
I do not include in the "wealth-creating private sector", self-described "green" jobs in technically private entities which, but for egregious and increasing subsidies from the taxpayer or electricity consumer, would disappear tomorrow.
U, your comment got held up in the spam queue for some reasons.
Indeed - it was bitter to see George Osborne in the Commons justifying the welfare cuts to the Labour opposition by explaining that the £8 billion they intend to hack off welfare spending will go to 'preserving' those 120,000 'front line jobs'.
As to 'technically private entities', don't forget that the government spends about half of all tax revenues on 'procurement' from and subsidies to nominally private entities, this is the single largest item of gummint spending, far larger than welfare/pensions or public sector salaries and pensions (and by God, there is a lot of waste in the last category).
MW / Um - Which seems to confirm Lola's General Theory of Government Spending, which states that (1) if government spending is 50% efficient I will eat my hat and (2) that Government does 50% too much anyway. i.e. Government could cut its spending by three quarters and the only difference we would notice is an explosion in economic growth and wealth creation.
L, of actual government spending, about three-quarters is wasted (education and health is better dealt with using vouchers). They even mess up the 'welfare and pensions' bit, the £200+ billion they spend does not benefit society by £200+ billon.
The key to this is, spend enough on the core functions (law and order, defence, refuse collection, roads and fire brigade) to do them properly (five per cent of GDP, tops) and dish out all other government receipts as a Citizen's Income/health/eduation vouchers.
MW
Spam? Moi? No idea why - maybe this one will go straight onto the thread.
As you say - or imply - paying the private sector to provide goods and services which are part of a "small government" remit is one thing, coughing up our money either to provide a subsidy for crapola (eg Ecotricity or the Arts Council or anything to do with Crapita) or to pay prodigal public sector pensions is quite another.
U: "paying the private sector to provide goods and services which are part of a "small government" remit is one thing..."
Yes, it is one of those 'things' which we can file straight under 'Bad Things' (except maybe refuse collection). Do you realise that the government spends one-fifth of GDP on 'private sector procurement'? That's nearly half of all government spending, and about two-thirds if you exclude welfare & pensions (which is redistribution rather than 'spending'). It appears that the Lib-Cons have every intention of increasing this proportion, not reducing it.
U, PS, if you'd like to post on this here 'blog, send me a email.
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